


Took the fire from my belly and the beat from my heart

by DAZzle_10



Series: You belong with me [9]
Category: Rugby RPF, Rugby Union RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Post-Concussion Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 08:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20832584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DAZzle_10/pseuds/DAZzle_10
Summary: A reaction to what was, and a reaction to what could have been.





	Took the fire from my belly and the beat from my heart

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's been a few days, but... Here, have two distinctly different possibilities, and just because I'm nice, I've ended it on a miserable note :)
> 
> How about Japan beating Ireland, though? And that lovely kiss yesterday... I have to say that I'm glad journalists are *finally* realising that it wasn't the shoulder charge that gave Owen a bloody nose - I mean, I knew even before I watched the match... (Sure, I had already been informed that Owen's nose looked like it could have been broken, but that obviously had nothing to do with it... Totally irrelevant...)

** _A reaction to what was:_ **

Dylan decides, within minutes of Owen getting onto the pitch, that he doesn’t like watching Owen play anymore. It’s far too stressful, when he isn’t there to somehow look out for his boyfriend, however little difference he knows it would make in actuality. There’s blood pouring from what looks to be a sizable dent in Owen’s nose, and Dylan’s heartrate is still calming from seeing Owen’s arm fly up to his face, the panic over seeing him on his hands and knees for so long just starting to fade. Around the room, Dylan has been aware of several glances from his company, concerned frowns from his clubmates registering in his periphery when they, too, clock that Owen is already looking somewhat worse for wear.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Still, when Owen gets the blood wiped off and jogs back to the team, looking entirely unconcerned – watching him make to walk past the doctor altogether before being stopped is almost enough to make Dylan snort – the worry is pushed down, locked away because Owen is _fine_. It’s probably just a surface wound; head injuries always bleed a lot, no matter how minor.

Relaxing, Dylan slumps back in his seat and crosses his arms to watch the unfolding series of handling errors mixed into the stilted flow a gradually clicking team play out before him. His nerves calmed, he finds himself starting to enjoy the match once more, muttering quiet encouragements under his breath and cursing whenever the team’s efforts go awry. Occasionally, the barest hints of nostalgic jealousy creep in, but he’s mostly mastered pushing such feelings away, if only because it almost seems like he’s living this World Cup through Owen.

(Honestly, he wants more than anything to be there, to be fit and without any knee problems, to never have played on that _fucking artificial pitch_, to be out there with Owen. It’s fine, though. He’ll survive, and as long as he doesn’t push too many of his own dreams and ambitions onto Owen, they’ll be alright.)

When Mark Wilson drops the ball, Dylan groans along with a good half of the room, slumping a little in his seat until the turnover is effected and the camera tracks away to follow Scully, Ugo Monye murmuring about conceding penalties in the background, and a moment later, Owen’s muffled shout has him perking up once more. The next few seconds are a blur of the crowd’s ominously unanimous reaction, Owen’s full name from one of the commentators – he doesn’t even register who – and then Owen, lying still on the ground. Dylan’s heart rises in his throat, ribs squeezing in even as Owen picks himself up and joins the ongoing brawl.

Owen’s fine; he’s on his feet, moving normally and definitely aware enough to grapple with the Yanks. That doesn’t change the fact that he _was_ on the ground, and Dylan doesn’t know why, but it doesn’t look like it was good, and the commentators are only adding to that impression. Mouth running dry, he grips the arms of his chair and leans forward, waiting while the scrap disbands and the Ref turns to the TMO for guidance.

…The hit is horrible. To his left, Dylan hears Alex mutter a shocked curse, but he ignores it, entirely focused on the way that Owen falls and just… lies still. Logically, he knows that Owen will get up – has already gotten up – but he can’t seem to move past seeing Owen on the grass like that, can’t dislodge the thought that, even on the off-chance that Owen genuinely _is_ fine, it could have been terrible. A hit like that could be the end of Owen’s World Cup, or even his career. A hit like that could see him struggling with the same problems Dylan had in 2018. A hit like that could leave him with a broken jaw, or any number of terrible injuries.

And Dylan’s stuck here in England, only able to cling by shaky fingertips to the fact that Owen is on his feet as the Ref shows Quill – and Dylan will remember that name – a red. On every exhale, his breath stutters, the fear of the initial incident not fading even now that the game is moving on. _Shit_, the things that hit could have done to Owen…

Sinking in his seat, he squeezes his eyes tightly shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, willing back the sudden tears welling in his eyes. He can’t even explain the reaction; he _knows_ Owen is fine. It’s just that the moment of sheer terror, seeing Owen limp on the floor without knowing anything about whether Owen was alright or not, hasn’t left him in the slightest, and it’s hitting hard that Owen is all the way in Japan, that Dylan has to rely on the TV to tell him if his boyfriend’s OK. If Owen isn’t, but he wants to pretend to be for the fans, Dylan has to believe it too. He can’t just walk over and see if Owen’s OK, and _fuck_, it’s only sheer dumb luck that Owen’s standing right now.

_Owen’s fine_, he tells himself desperately. _Owen’s fine_.

He doesn’t know that, though – not for certain.

“Karma’s a bitch,” Teimana announces somewhere behind him, and only Dylan’s lack of voice prevents him from turning around and screaming at his teammate.

“Mate, some fucking _tact_…” comes the hushed response, while Dylan tracks Owen’s movements on screen, examining his boyfriend’s behaviour and body language and trying to determine whether or not Owen really is fine.

“What…?”

Dylan doesn’t look. He doesn’t need to, to feel all eyes in the room turn to him.

“…Oh,” Teimana sounds suitably reprimanded, at least.

The rest of the match passes – for Dylan – in tense silence. The rest of the team seems subdued, perhaps brought down by his own low mood, and he would feel bad for it, but worry about Owen overshadows his concern for their feelings. At every break in play, he waits for someone to run on, to say that Owen needs an HIA; for the Ref to call for one; for anything to show that Owen has gotten off less than unscathed from that hit. Nothing comes, but it doesn’t ease his fears at all.

As soon as the match ends, Dylan stands with phone in hand and hurries from the room, already scrolling down his contacts for the name he needs. Owen won’t pick up at the moment, so there’s no point in even trying him, but there’s one man who should know about anything that’s immediately wrong with Owen who may well answer.

“He’s fine, mate,” Eddie tells him straight off the bat, without so much as a greeting, apparently more than capable of reading Dylan’s intentions and mood over the connection. “I promise. He’s had a bit taken out of his nose from earlier, but we’re not concerned about concussion or anything like that, alright?”

“Yeah,” Dylan blows out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, shaky with relief as he slumps back against the wall of the corridor. “Fuck… Thanks, Eddie.”

“No problem,” Eddie assures him. “I’d like to catch up some time, but I’ve got places to be – I’ll get Owen to call you when he can, yeah?”

“Thanks,” Dylan croaks out, the single word quivering embarrassingly. “I’ll catch you some other time.”

“Of course,” Eddie agrees. “Take care of yourself.”

“And you.”

_And Owen_.

For several minutes after he gets off the phone, Dylan stays in the corridor, forcibly calming himself down. Owen really is fine. It was ridiculous of him to get so worked up anyway, but that hit was _terrible_, and seeing that Owen is acting OK on camera is not the same as being able to ascertain it himself. Eddie, at least, he trusts to tell him the truth if Owen has been hiding anything.

Slowly, his worry fades away, but as it does, a new thought registers, strange and unsettling: that is the first time he’s spoken to Eddie not as a player in his own right, but merely as the partner of a player. Something uncomfortable prickles in his throat with the realisation; it feels like the final confirmation that his career as an England player is over for good, with this shift in role now, apparently, completed.

It’s no use dwelling on that, though – not right now. Taking a deep breath, he rolls his shoulders and heads back to his clubmates, offering a nod and a smile when Alex’s head tilts questioningly.

“He’s fine,” he announces, and the tension in the room dissipates.

“Owen, mate!”

Owen twists away from his conversation with Fordy, cocking his head expectantly and feeling his nose twinge as he does so.

“I told Dyls I’d get you to call him,” Eddie explains with a small grin, and for a moment, Owen can only frown in confusion. “He called right after the game to check you were alright.”

_Oh_.

Owen hasn’t even thought about how that must have looked to Dylan, but now that he thinks about it… Yeah, it probably wasn’t great.

“Right,” he nods. “I’ll do that – sorry, Fordy…”

“That’s fine, mate,” George pats his arse, already looking around for someone else – probably Ben – to talk to. “You go reassure your lad.”

Rolling his eyes, Owen heads off to find his phone, then steps out of the changing room to dial Dylan’s number.

“_Owen_.” The relief in Dylan’s voice on picking up is startling, and Owen reassesses his analysis of the hit from an outside perspective from ‘not great’ to ‘pretty fucking awful’, to have gained such a reaction from his boyfriend. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m alright,” Owen assures him quickly, deciding that it’s best to lead with that. “Bit pissed off about the hit, and my nose hurts a lot, but I’m fine.”

Dylan chokes on a weak laugh, Owen updating his assumptions yet again with the realisation that Dylan is _still_ shaken.

“Are _you_ alright?” he tests carefully, and listens to the breath that Dylan blows out. “It looked a lot worse than it felt, I promise.”

“Yeah,” comes the quiet reply. “Yeah, I am. You just… worried me a few times. I didn’t realise how stressful it would be to watch you…”

“A few times?” Owen echoes, confusion wrinkling his nose painfully.

“Your nose?” Dylan prompts. “I wasn’t sure what had happened at first – you were just on the floor, so…”

“Oh,” Owen searches for another way to assure Dylan that he’s fine, but can’t think of anything that he hasn’t already said. “Didn’t Eddie tell you I was…?”

“Yeah,” Dylan hurries to confirm, “He did. “It was just… I mean, I saw you get up and keep playing, so… I’m not used to not being able to check myself, is all.”

And there’s really nothing to say to that, because Dylan isn’t in Japan with the team, and Owen knows it’s still a sore spot – for Dylan, and for him. For Dylan, it’s an opportunity lost: any chance at redemption after 2015 gone and, beyond that, a dream that’s been a long time coming lost for good. For Owen… For Owen, it hurts to know that Dylan is hurting, and to think that they were so close to sharing this together. It hurts to think that it’s his fault that Dylan has become expendable, as stupid as he knows that idea is. It hurts to know that Dylan could have been with him, and although he agreed on letting the lads have their partners here based almost solely on that feeling, it’s still torture to see how happy they are to have their families out here but know that his own is stuck at home, and no matter how far they make it through this tournament, Dylan will never be out here to cheer him on without some other kind of heartbreak occurring.

“Anyway,” Dylan clears his throat roughly, obviously having been dwelling on similar thoughts. “Let me know when you’ll be able to video call.”

“Sure,” Owen agrees. “We’ve got a few days’ break now, so I should be able to get a bit of flexibility on that.”

“Good,” Dylan falls silent for a second. “I love you, Owen.”

“I love you too.”

When he heads back into the changing room, Owen finds himself almost immediately confronted by Eddie, the Australian smiling softly.

“Alright, mate?”

“Yeah,” Owen has to blow out a breath, slumping a little. “Didn’t expect Dyl to get so… worked up.”

“Well, given his history…” Eddie shrugs, and Owen has to concede that it’s a good point – and not one he’d thought of. “He’s taking time to adjust, I reckon. I know it hasn’t been easy for him.”

Suddenly, Owen finds himself pinned by a considering stare, Eddie’s expression falling into something markedly more serious.

“Or you,” the coach adds; Owen has to swallow an unexpected blockage in his throat. “Don’t bottle that up, you hear me? Last thing we need is you getting worked up about external issues.”

There’s nothing Owen can think of to do but nod, glad when Eddie seems to find that a satisfactory response and moves on, leaving Owen to slowly make his way over to his kit.

“_He’s missing part of his nose, which is unfortunate_,” Dylan closes his eyes and tries not to wince, because while he knows Eddie is mostly joking, the bare bones of the words _are_ true. “_But he’s in a relationship, and Dyls would hardly be one to complain in that sense, so he’ll be okay._”

That brings a reluctant snort bubbling up in Dylan’s throat, and he knows immediately why Owen has decided to play him this clip from the interview.

“Yes, yes,” he grumbles as Owen grins at him in delight. “Very funny.”

“_Have_ you got a problem with my looks?” Owen presses smugly, looking very much like a cat who’s just been introduced to a lifetime’s supply of cream.

“Yes,” Dylan says promptly, and although he originally meant it in a teasing way, he can’t help but change his mind, adding, “You look _far_ too good to be thousands of kilometres away, where I can’t –”

“Dylan!” Owen’s eyes widen, Dylan taking his turn to watch triumphantly as Owen twists around to make sure that whoever he’s rooming with didn’t hear that.

“You asked,” Dylan shrugs. “I’m just answering. And you didn’t let me finish.”

He gives Owen a moment to decide how to respond; he’s not going to put his boyfriend in _too_ awkward a situation. Owen stares at him, eyes still round with shock, then takes another glance around the room and stands, reaching out towards his laptop. The room behind him moves, until white tiles replace the previous background, and Owen sits down, apparently on the edge of the bath.

“OK,” his boyfriend tells him, voice a little strained. “What were you saying?”

**_And a reaction to what could have been:_**

_Owen’s down_, is the first thing that registers in Dylan’s head when the TV cuts away from Blaine Scully and back to the action. Worry surges through him as the camera shifts to zoom in on the brawl, the image of Owen lying limp on the turf lodged firmly in his mind’s eye even though his teammates’ attention has turned entirely to the ongoing scuffle. Desperately, he waits for Owen to appear in shot, because he knows his boyfriend wouldn’t miss a chance to get his own back for a hit like that; there’s no way Owen would be able to hold himself back from joining in.

Owen doesn’t appear.

With each passing second, sickness rises, a band of steel tightening itself around Dylan’s throat and squeezing viciously. Hands tight on the arms of his chair, he leans forward to stare fixedly at the screen, hoping for something to counter the fear now rising inside him, but deep down, he knows. Owen hasn’t appeared because Owen hasn’t got up. The commentators are talking about ‘assault on the rugby pitch,’ and Dylan doesn’t know exactly what happened, but it must have been bad. Out of shot, Owen must be lying in that same position, dazed at the very least, and at the very worst…

“_Shit_,” Dylan croaks, and as if the TV can hear him, the camera changes, and it’s Owen on the screen once more, barely moving with doctors gathered around. “Oh, _fuck_…”

_No, no, no…_

“Dyls,” Alex murmurs in his ear, but Dylan pays his teammate no mind, caught on Owen’s still form, rolled into recovery position for the time being while the doctors call for a stretcher. “Dyls, he’ll be alright, mate.”

Is Alex even watching the same thing as Dylan? Owen’s blatantly still unconscious, and that alone means it must be bad. Pressing his knuckles to his mouth, he sits back to stare blankly ahead as the TMO is called upon and a shoulder slams into Owen’s head. He watches the blow reverberate through Owen’s skull, sees his boyfriend fall to land roughly on the ground, and Owen’s last action is to curl his arm around his head – a movement which may well have been involuntary, for all Dylan knows.

A red doesn’t even _begin_ to cut it. He’ll remember that name: John Quill, the man who may well have stolen Owen’s World Cup dreams – and who even knows what else. He’ll remember that name, and he’ll get his revenge for it if they ever meet on the rugby field, even for five minutes. They don’t _need_ to show the hit more than once, yet they do, and Dylan stares as Owen’s head shudders again and again with the force of the collision, expression slackening in slow motion – and then it repeats once more, from a different angle, on and on until Dylan has to turn away, nauseated.

In the end, he can’t watch the rest of the match. He can’t take his mind off Owen, can’t stop his thoughts from wandering to questions of what state his boyfriend could be in right now – and what state he’ll be in when he wakes up enough to realise what’s happened, because there’s no doubt in Dylan’s head that this is the end of Owen’s World Cup. The thought of how much this will ruin Owen is enough to bring tears to his eyes.

Not three minutes after the game gets back underway, Dylan stands and staggers his way from the room, ignoring the worried eyes that follow him. He can’t get to Japan in time to be there for Owen, he knows, unless it’s even worse than he thought. If he’s right, they’ll fly Owen home in a matter of days, unless Eddie really wants to try and push him back to some sort of fitness against all odds. Somehow, Dylan doubts that Eddie would be so desperate even for a World Cup.

Outside, in the quiet of the corridor, he paces until his phone buzzes in his pocket, and then, he answers it only because Eddie’s name is the one lighting up his screen, barely managing to croak out a greeting as his vision blurs.

“Hey, mate,” Eddie’s voice is soft, careful. “They’ve taken him to hospital, alright?”

“Oh, _shit_…” Dylan can’t help but breathe, though really, he expected it.

“We’re pretty sure it won’t be too long until he wakes up,” Eddie continues, and _pretty sure_ is nowhere near enough, but Dylan doesn’t voice that thought aloud. “But… He won’t be playing again this autumn.”

“Yeah,” Dylan croaks, closing his eyes. “He’s going to be devastated.”

Eddie hums in non-verbal agreement.

“We’ll get him home to you as soon as we can,” the coach promises. “Tomorrow, even, if he’s alright to fly. Will you be able to pick him up, or…?”

“Of course,” Dylan assures hastily, because there’s no way he _won’t_ be picking Owen up from the airport. “_Fuck_.”

“I know, mate,” Eddie tells him gently. “He’s young enough to have another World Cup in him yet, though.”

“He has to recover from this and get back to playing first!” Dylan bites out, deflating immediately when he realises that he’s just snapped at Eddie. “Sorry, I –”

Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he bites his lip.

“It’ll help him to hear that,” he acknowledges carefully, Eddie staying blessedly silent while he sorts his head out. “I just… How likely is this to…?”

“Have longer repercussions?” Eddie fills in. “I don’t know yet, mate. I’m sorry. I’ll update you as soon as I can.”

“Alright.”

Dylan almost chokes on the single word, because it’s _not_ alright. It’s not alright at all.

There’s nothing he can do about it but pick up the pieces, though – and then carefully, painstakingly, put Owen back together.

When Owen gets back to England the next evening, Dylan is there waiting for him, ready to offer Owen whatever support is needed. He’s had more than a day to mentally prepare himself, and has already adjusted the house a little to make it slightly friendlier for someone trying to recover from a concussion. The Owen who arrives, however, is silent and blank-faced, staring around the airport with flat, hollow eyes that seem void of any and all emotion, and Dylan has to admit to feeling a little cautious.

“Let’s get you home,” he murmurs anyway, wrapping an arm around Owen’s waist to hold him steady, and is relieved when Owen follows the pull without any form of protest.

In the car, unsurprisingly, Owen sleeps, and when they get home, Dylan helps him straight up to the bedroom and guides him through the process of changing, starting to feel slightly concerned that Owen hasn’t said a word to him. He knows that Owen has a long road to recovery ahead of him, which will undoubtedly be made harder by the emotional pain, but this is nothing like what Dylan anticipated, and honestly, it’s worrying.

Once he’s certain that his boyfriend is asleep once more, he calls Eddie.

“Did the doctors say anything about any brain damage?” he asks, glad that it won’t seem too out of the blue given that Eddie promised him more updates. “Anything at all?”

“Nah, mate,” Eddie assures him. “Nothing more than the usual – bit of trouble concentrating and that, but all his major functions should be in place.”

“…Right,” Dylan swallows, and can’t decide whether he’s relieved to hear that or not, because it means that Owen’s silence is entirely self-induced.

Perhaps he’s just tired; maybe, in the morning, he’ll talk a little more.

The morning is no better. Owen sits stiff and silent at the table, staring listlessly at his plate, and Dylan’s heart sinks. He doesn’t know what to do or say, because he’s trying to be careful of Owen’s head, but the emotional pain needs to be dealt with too, and perhaps it would be better to get that out of the way now instead of waiting however many weeks for Owen to really be up for it.

Clearing his throat, he sees Owen’s eyes flicker briefly in his direction before trailing miserably back down to the table.

“Owen,” he starts gently, only to get a small shake of the head, and decides not to press it yet. “…At least eat your breakfast.”

Owen does as told without a hint of fight, eyes trained downwards the entire time, and Dylan’s heart cracks a little more at the sight. Through most of the day, Owen sleeps, though Dylan wakes him up carefully for meals and occasionally to make sure he’s staying hydrated.

The next day is much of the same; Dylan’s starting to feel a little desperate, because he hasn’t heard Owen speak once since getting home, and he feels as though he’s past worry and into despair by now. Despite spending most of his time sleeping, there are dark circles forming under Owen’s eyes and a lethargy to his movements, his feet dragging and his shoulders slumping. Dylan doesn’t know what to do.

Several more times, he tries to talk to Owen about it, but his boyfriend seems to have some sort of strange awareness of whenever Dylan is about to broach that topic, because the only responses he gets when he tries are shakes of the head or complete blanks, Owen apparently happy to pretend that he hasn’t heard Dylan in the first place.

At night, Owen curls into Dylan’s chest, tucking his head under Dylan’s chin, and falls asleep seemingly instantly, leaving Dylan to hold the younger man gently and wrack his brains for anything that could possibly help. The few things he does come up with turn out to be utter failures when he tries them the next morning, and Dylan’s almost tempted to drag Owen to a specialist – or at least the Saints team psychologist.

It’s only on the fifth night of Owen being back in England that, as Dylan presses his lips to Owen’s hair and murmurs his usual, ‘Good night’, the routine changes.

“Dyl –” Owen croaks, and then falls silent, Dylan holding his breath as he waits for any more words.

Owen, however, doesn’t say anything else, and gradually, Dylan slumps in disappointment, even as he searches for an appropriate response that might encourage Owen to open up more on another night. Before he can formulate anything, however, Owen’s shoulders shake, a sudden, desperate sob bursting forth, and Dylan is taken entirely by surprise as Owen starts to cry against him, gasps wounded and broken, choked by Owen’s own tears. There’s nothing to do but cradle Owen close to his chest, but Dylan does so gratefully, even as his heart shatters completely in the face of Owen’s raw, defeated agony.

“I know, love, I know,” he comes up with eventually, as the intensity of Owen’s crying starts to tail off a little, subsiding into small, fragile hiccups as Owen grips him as if for dear life.

“It doesn’t –” Owen stops and sniffs loudly. “It doesn’t feel fair.”

“It isn’t,” Dylan tells him, soft and careful as he presses his lips to the top of Owen’s head once more. “It really isn’t.”

“I just…” Owen whispers, blowing out a long, quiet breath against Dylan’s collarbone. “I wanted this, Dyl. So – So _fucking badly_.”

“I know,” Dylan manages a smile as his eyes sting; Owen’s pain is so visceral, practically sinking into his bones. “But you’ll have another chance, and you’ll take it with both hands. I know you.”

Owen murmurs something, too softly for Dylan to catch properly, but he knows Owen well enough to guess the bits he missed:

“_I wanted this one._”

Biting his lip, Dylan closes his eyes to in an attempt to compose himself as a sudden flare of anger bursts inside him at the thought of John Quill: the man who ruined Owen’s dreams, who tore up all of Owen’s hard work – and alongside it, Dylan’s, and probably the team’s – who has gotten away with a measly six weeks. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.

“I’ve got you,” he promises as Owen dissolves back into wordless sobs, trembling from head to toe with the depth of his torment. “It’s going to get easier, love.”

_Just not for a long time yet, and not without a lot of pain._


End file.
